Yesterday's post introduced the story of Exodus 32, where the Israelites infuriate God by turning to idols. Today we will highlight God's role in the story.
God saw what they were doing and said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have acted perversely!....Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation."
Moses responds, imploring God to be merciful, "O Yahweh, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?...turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind (Hb. nahem) and do not bring disaster on your people."
God saw what they were doing and said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have acted perversely!....Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation."
Moses responds, imploring God to be merciful, "O Yahweh, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?...turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind (Hb. nahem) and do not bring disaster on your people."
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| Embracing tension |
Does God change his mind? It would certainly appear that way from passages like this, and others such as Amos 7.3, 6 (cf. Gen 6.6, 7).
But what about 1 Sam 15.29 "Moreover the Glory of Israel will not recant or change his mind (nahem); for he is not a mortal, that he should change his mind (nahem)?"
People fight to harmonize these passages in all sorts of ways. What may be most important though, is to hold them in tension.
The text says that we serve a God that changes his mind, and we should respect that. God is genuinely affected by our actions, he is not fixed and stale (cf. Jer 18.8; Gen 18.22ff). It should also be pointed out, that he always changes his mind toward mercy, never the other way around.
But he also stands outside of space and time, and is "the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb 13.8), and "does not change" (Mal 3:6). These texts are intended to comfort us by highlighting God's reliability. He remains faithful even when we are not (2 Tim 2.13).
Holding these passages in tension is very difficult, but necessary for honest Biblical interpretation, as well as honest life interpretation. If the Bible doesn't teach you that life is messy, and tension is necessary, life certainly will.
3 comments:
Your closing paragraph today is absolutely correct. Last two postings were very good, and liked the tension analogy, it's the pull not the compression that is the toughest to deal with in structural engineering.
There's also the story where Israel demands a king, and God responds saying "not the best idea in the world" but eventually he changes his mind (though some would say he gave them a king just to show them how right he is).
I remember 5-6 years ago when I discovered this passage it was like a stunning revelation. And you make a great point that if the Bible doesn't teach us these lessons, life will and then we'll be tempted to distrust the Bible.
The very idea of God changing his mind is hard to grasp. Not only are we affected the greek philosophy the church assumed early on, but I think it just psychologically freaks us out to know that the eternal God 'changes his mind', making him more human that we'd like.
To me, there are so many cultural things to take into account before I can say the bible says God changes his mind. The very idea of God, how he's pleased, and who he is (excuse masculine language) is always developing in the NT.
I'd sit in the tension before I make a decision on the subject.
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